[HN Gopher] How to Make a Longbow
___________________________________________________________________
How to Make a Longbow
Author : nbernard
Score : 118 points
Date : 2025-04-11 09:49 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.howtomakealongbow.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.howtomakealongbow.co.uk)
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| I've been thinking lately "I wonder how to make a longbow?" and
| here it is.
| gryzzly wrote:
| i wonder why this tiny website costs a lot per month. wouldnt it
| fit np on a free tier of Pages or Cloudflare. Id volunteer to
| migrate it from wordpress or whatever they run on.
| j4pe wrote:
| This was my first thought as well. I wonder if he hired someone
| to build it and is paying some kind of monthly maintenance fee.
| Anyone here could contact this guy and offer to put the page
| behind a (probably ~free) CDN.
| qw wrote:
| My guess is that he wants to be compensated for the time he
| spent. There's a lot of content on that site, and making a bit
| of money is a good motivation to keep updating the site
| p_ing wrote:
| Shooting barebow recurve / horsebow is one of the most zen-like
| experiences I've had. And it's a workout!
|
| I would encourage anyone remotely interested to take lessons
| before you start practicing on your own to prevent bad habits or
| to prevent from hurting your fingers/hands/shoulders. Trainers
| should have light-weight bows, around 16# or so for you to try.
| Etsy is a good place to buy accessories (tabs, quivers, gloves,
| rings, etc.).
|
| I've bought arrows/bows from these folks and really like what I
| received:
|
| https://www.szimeiszterbows.hu/
|
| https://asianbows.com/
|
| And for less expensive carbon arrows, I have a few different sets
| from https://linkboyarchery.com/. Really good stuff.
|
| Lancasterarchery.com is a US-based outfit that has a variety of
| good equipment.
| undyingtrillion wrote:
| Don't forget elbow lashes, those are brutal.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Shooting a bow and riding a horse are difficult enough
| activities on their own. I can't imagine how hard it must be to
| be able to competently shoot a bow from a fast moving horse.
| allturtles wrote:
| Cool! Part 2 on "gluing laminations" got me to wondering how an
| ancient/medieval bowyer would have actually glued the layers
| together, considering they didn't have access to polyvinyl
| acetate. Wikipedia has some clues at [0]: "Traditionally animal
| proteins like casein from milk or collagen from animal hides and
| bones were boiled down to make early glues." and [1]: "A Scythian
| wood-laminate bow was... constructed by laminating several fine
| strips of willow and alder wood, bound with fish glue and wrapped
| in birch bark."
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_glue
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminated_bow
| dsr_ wrote:
| Similarly, glue and woven fabric layers make excellent
| composite armor.
| techas wrote:
| This kind of animal glues have some nice properties than "white
| glue" miss, e.g. you can remove it with heat. Traditional
| woodworkers still use it. You can buy it today:
| https://www.fine-tools.com/oberfl.html
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| I've made a self-bow (ie a longbow from a single piece of wood) -
| under instruction it took a couple of days with some simple, but
| very sharp, tools.
|
| If you're going the laminate route do yourself a favour and buy
| some pre-laminated wood designed for the pressures a bow needs to
| take. The results of laminate cracking and splintering near your
| eye don't really bear thinking about.
| beloch wrote:
| Also, never dry fire your bow. (i.e. Never pull and release it
| if you're not shooting an arrow.)
|
| When you pull a bow, you're putting a significant amount of
| potential energy into it. Your back and arms do work that
| becomes tension in the limbs of the bow. When you fire an
| arrow, most of that energy goes into propelling the arrow down
| range. The bow is designed to do this. If there is no arrow,
| that energy has to go somewhere. Typically, it goes into
| vibrations that the bow is _not_ designed to handle. This can
| cause delamination, cracks or even catastrophic failure _in
| your face_.
|
| Just because a bow survives one dry fire doesn't mean it'll
| survive two or three or more. A bow that has been dry fired is
| not safe to use and needs to be checked out.
| jakubmazanec wrote:
| When I was a kid, I made a bow using the instructions from Two
| Little Savages by Ernest Thompson Seton [1]. It was fun making
| it, but I didn't actually learn to use it properly.
|
| [1]
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/13499/13499-h/13499-h.htm#2I...
| blagie wrote:
| If this is submitted by the person who made the page:
|
| There should be clear links to the class and how to sign up. I
| know this isn't a marketing page, but there's plenty of people
| who would gladly pay money to do this supervised. This seems like
| an ideal father-son activity with a teenager for summer break.
| NoSalt wrote:
| All I can think of is: "Poor Boromir." :-(
| buescher wrote:
| I made a self-bow in a class and will need to make another one.
| If you think you'd like to make a bow and you have the
| opportunity to learn from someone, jump on it.
| aktuel wrote:
| Waiting for "how to use a longbow" and "how to not kill anyone
| with a longbow".
| glacier5674 wrote:
| Grape Brick style: "It is of the utmost importance that you do
| not do the following with your longbow. Lest you maximize its
| lethality, please take care to avoid carrying out these
| specific instructions with your new purely decorative longbow.
| At all times, ensure that the bow is never fired in the
| direction of the vital points outlined on the anatomical chart
| (FIG. 1)"
| codeduck wrote:
| Shout out to Archery GB - https://archerygb.org/ - because if
| you're going to be firing arrows, you really really should know
| how to do it safely. Bows are not toys.
| p_ing wrote:
| And for the US - USA Archery https://www.usarchery.org/
| a_shoeboy wrote:
| 25 years ago, I had a Honduran roommate who barely spoke English.
| One day he came home with a thrift store VHS on how to make
| longbows and he watched that thing over and over like it would
| tell him the meaning of life. I hope he finally got ahold of some
| yew wood and made one.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I mean, I've certainly watched Adam Savage and other youtuber's
| build random stuff on a lazy sunday morning, or as a background
| to getting some housecleaning or work done, or while I'm
| working on building my own random thing.
|
| I find it pretty gratifying and I'm not even going into those
| videos to learn what they are specifically doing most of the
| time, but still often I'll pick up a technique or two.
|
| My selfbow staves (four of them in case I fuck them up or want
| to try again) are currently in my friends garage over by the
| furnace drying, it's kinda the biggest bummer to making your
| own bow step 2 (1. Acquire a stave 2. Wait for it to dry (for
| many months probably)).
| gnuser wrote:
| In my family boys are taught this at about 8. This makes me want
| to do it again. I had my grandfathers bow stolen out of the trunk
| of my car and haven't nooked an arrow in a long time.
| pugworthy wrote:
| There is an out of print book from the 50's that's a great
| resource for bow making.
|
| The full title is, "The Archer's Craft; a Sheaf of Notes on
| Certain Matters Concerning Archers and Archery, the making of
| archers' Tackle and the Art of Hunting with the Bow" and the
| author is Adrian Eliot Hodgkin.
| WillAdams wrote:
| There are a fair number of them --- one of my favourites was
| Hunt's _The FlatBow_:
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3977436-the-flat-bow
|
| (having read a number of his other books)
|
| https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/paleoplanet69529/decurve-ref...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Meanwhile, far away, in the vast and remote reaches of Russia, in
| a modest workshop beside a weathered small house, an old man
| patiently teaches his small grandson the art of assembling a
| Kalashnikov.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| It really is an art compared to more modern options, mostly due
| to trying to replicate what a skilled operator at stamped metal
| factory at the time was capable of at a small scale. That and
| the press fit barrel and gas block are much trickier than just
| torquing a barrel nut to the right amount of ft/lbs. like with
| the AR platform.
|
| Enthusiasts will pay eyebrow raising amounts for custom ones
| from a shop with an impressive reputation for something that
| was the height of 1950s technology.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| Meanwhile in India a small family workshop manufactures new
| Kalashnikov's by hand for export ...
| srean wrote:
| Elaborate please.
| Beestie wrote:
| Finally - something I can actually use.
| raffael_de wrote:
| Just yesterday I randomly stumbled across this very interesting
| clip on youtube about longbow crafting in Japan:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPKts3cHvv8
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| If you want to make a bow, the Tradition Bowyer's Bible is a
| fantastic resource.
| rendleflag wrote:
| 40-plus years ago, I would take my dads bow and arrows, stand in
| the front yard, and shoot arrows straight up in the air. Not too
| high up, but high enough for me to toss the bow aside and catch
| the arrow in my hands when it came back down. Good times. Stupid,
| but good times.
| gorfian_robot wrote:
| Lawn Darts++
| sejje wrote:
| Dad didn't stop you, eh?
| rendleflag wrote:
| It was the 80s.
| nvader wrote:
| Steve Boss, an artist and craftsman at the Portland Art Market,
| sold me an American Flatbow several years ago. He also handmade,
| fletched and tested the arrows himself. I wish I could refer to
| his website but I don't think he has an online presence outside
| of a personal Facebook page.
|
| Although I've only shot the bow a handful of times, it's always
| been a really fulfilling experience.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| The helicopter?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-11 23:01 UTC)